16 May 2012

Debriefing PROOF

One of the things we have been keen on implementing at my company is testing debriefs. Our main purpose for these debriefs is to learn from each other, as
opposed to using them as a management tool. We experimented with a couple of techniques, including the session debriefing checklist from session-based testing. This we found a bit too cumbersome for our needs, but we did find that the idea of a standard set of questions was particularly useful. A little digging led us to PROOF:

Past - What happened?Results - What did you find?Obstacles - What issues prevented you testing?Outlook - What still needs to be done?Feelings - What do you feel about the testing?

This set of questions (originally conceived by Jon Bach) we found gave us a good balance between a checklist and a starting point for discussions.